Information Management and the Digital Firm

Information Management and the Digital Firm

Courtney M. Walker Sr.

CIS Intro Mgt. Info Systems

Dr. Laurant Jolly

February 24, 2013

The Digital Firm is a general term for organizations that have enabled core business relationships with employees, customers, suppliers, and other external partners through digital networks. These digital networks are supported by enterprise class technology platforms that have been leveraged within an organization to support critical business functions and services. Some examples of these technology platforms are Customer Relationship Management, Supply Chain Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, Knowledge Management System, Enterprise Content Management, and Warehouse Management System among others. The purpose of these technology platforms is to digitally enable seamless integration and information exchange within the organization to employees and outside the organization to customers, suppliers, and other business partners.

Studies of organizations that deploy enterprise resource planning systems have found that those organizations achieve several operational efficiencies and overall improvements in performance. In particular, enterprise resource planning systems have been shown to foster a paperless environment, provide efficient inventory tracking, and increase inventory accuracy. Enterprise resource planning deployments can be complex and require a significant shift in business operations for an organization but the benefits can be substantial. Research conducted on the benefits of enterprise resource planning systems has found many positive impacts on a firm both from an operational and financial perspective. Typical financial benefits achieved by an enterprise resource planning implementation are shorter accounts receivables cycles and the acceleration of account collections. After implementation of an enterprise resource planning system within an organization there are measurable performance and productivity gains...